


Check her pulse

by Multifandom_damnation



Series: The Storm that comforts the Sea [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Big Brother Jason, Dark!Percy, F/M, Gen, Give these kids a hug please, I hope this is ok, I wrote this last minute for a friends birthday, I'm sorry the tenses switch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 13:51:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12133857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: A body is supposed to be warm, a heartbeat loud and breathing even. Moving, moving, always moving. A live body that is.Then why is Annabeth so still?Check her pulse, check her pulse, check her pulse, check her pulse, check her pulse.A holy mantra repeating itself in his head.Check her pulse, check her pulse, check her pulse, check her pulse, check her pulse.Please.Please let her be ok.





	Check her pulse

He wakes up in a cold sweat, quickly-but-carefully sitting up so he didn’t hit his head on the bunk above him and grabbed his hair, tugging the black stands and threading it through his fingers to ground him to the now. Slowly, his hands stop shaking, his fingers stop twitching, his brain stops screaming, his chest stops the rapid rising-falling of a man’s last breaths and his heart stops hammering away behind his rib-cage.

He drums his fingers against his scalp, blinks away the last of that night’s sleep, breathes in for 8 holds for 4 and out for 7. He places a hand over his frantic heart and tries to still it. He counts until his breathing and heartbeats match and then he starts counting the beats between the two. The images started to fade from behind his eyelids, the black and red swirls fading into an afterimage of fear and death and pain.

He opens his eyes and is greeted by the cool darkness and safety of his cabin. Every nook and cranny recorded to memory, every and any sound as familiar to him as his own face in the mirror. Although, that was becoming less and less familiar to him as time went by. He often wondered how long it would take him to forget his old face, his old smile, the way his eyes lit up and crinkled when he laughed and how his skin was free of pale scars and fading burns.

He lowers his fingers and licks his lips to get rid of the acidic taste of the nightmare, worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth. He feels the heat from beside him, a heat that’s become as familiar to him these past few months as his cabin has. He gently racks his fingers through the blond locks as he smiled down at her sleeping face. Unmoving and cold, her face was the one thing he knew he would never forget if he tried-

He stopped. His fingers ceased their path through her hair, his heart motionless beating and his breath froze in his lungs.  _Cold_.  _Unmoving_. That’s not right. She kicks and she mumbles and she snores. She was never so… still. She was colder than the arctic ocean and her face had lost some pallor to it. She was burning, always a burning star to his cold depths, but right now their roles were switched and only one thought ran through his head like a holy mantra.

_Check her pulse, check her pulse, check her pulse, check her pulse, check her pulse._

With shaking fingers, he gently lifted her arm and put two fingers to her wrist. He waited, his held breath burning his chest, and nearly cried when he felt the jump of life against his fingertips. He tried to rationalise to quiet his screaming mind. The room was cold, he realised then, the parts of her body out of the bed were cold because the room was icy. He could feel her legs kicking gently beneath the covers and soft snores escaped her mouth. She was  _alive_.

But when he brought his hands to his face and saw them trembling like an earthquake, saw his vision go blur with fear and the memories of too much loss made his mind numb, he gently covered her with the rest of the blankets and slipped out the side. He quietly padded across the wooden floor, careful to avoid the objects hidden in the dark and reached the door. His mind was still screaming and his heart was still roaring but he carefully opened the door, cautious of the slight squeak. He watched for the harpies to fly to the other end of the camp, then he gently closed the door behind him when he made his way out and ran.

He ran like Nyx was on his tale, the darkness of memories about to consume him. He ran with his eyes closed, he realised and he was running through the camp with muscle memory. He ran past the Zeus cabin and the mess hall, headed in a beeline for his safe place.

He collapsed in the sand, gasping and squeezing his eyes closed so tight he could see sparks. He gripped the sand in his fists and focused on the course feeling of it on his palms, running through his fingers and over the back of his hand. It was soft sand, smooth sand, not the black shards of the beaches in Tartarus. He gripped the sand so tightly he bled, rocks indenting itself in his palms.

He heard screaming, his name.  _“Percy. Percy. Percy.”_  And she was on her knees, begging for him to get up, to help her  _help Annabeth_! but he couldn’t move. He watched the blood run in rivulets and turn into a flood, and he was drowning, drowning in fear and pain and sorrow.  _How can a son of Poseidon drown?_  He of the often asked himself. Now he knew the answer.

A hand on his shoulder and Percy’s breaths were coming in ragged gasps, squeezing his eyes shut to block out the blood. He opened them and tried to blink away the tears before they could fall, but he was too late. They were already falling down his face and landing in the sand.

“Percy,” He heard again, but it wasn’t Annabeth’s cries of anguish, it was… who? “You alright man? Should I call Will?”

What was Jason doing out this late at night? “N-no,” Percy said, quickly rubbing the tears from his face, but he couldn’t stop more from brimming in his eyes. “I’m ok. I’m fine. What are you doing out here?”

“I could ask you the same thing but I feel like I already know the answer,” Jason said and Percy could hear Jason running his fingers through his hair. “I saw you running past the Zeus cabin. I thought I’d come out and see if you needed anything.”

Percy bit his lip, knew when it turned red. He didn’t want to turn around, didn’t want Jason to see his face. “I’m good man. Thanks though.”

He held his breath, hoping to hear his footsteps fade away into the sand. But Jason hadn’t moved away, only sat down next to Percy and put his arms around his knees. Percy stared down at the sand and watched his blood and tears mix together in the grains.

“What happened, Perce?” Jason asked finally, watching the waves come in. “What spooked you so badly?” Percy didn’t want to answer. He didn’t want Jason to think he was weak, didn’t want him to know. But his shoulders started shaking and his lungs started to burn and he knew that Jason would see and know he was lying or holding something back or keeping a secret- and that was almost as bad as telling the truth.

“I thought she was dead.” He whispered, letting the tears fall. He felt Jason look at him. Percy didn’t think he could meet those piercing blue eyes, not when he knew that Jason would not stop until he found out what was wrong. “Why would you think that?” Jason asked, an exhale of breath that curled on the wind. It must have been cold. Percy could feel it. “It wasn’t a nightmare was it?”

“It was but… it wasn’t. I woke up from a nightmare, but she was next to me and I thought she was dead.” Percy rubbed the back of his head, tugging at his hair.

“You said you weren’t having nightmares anymore.” It wasn’t a question. “You said you hadn’t had one in months.”

“Yeah, well. I lied.”

Percy could hear Jason sigh. He extended his legs, grunting at an old injury in his knee, and watched the water wind itself over Percy’s knuckles. “Did you lie about being ok as well then?”

Percy didn’t feel like an answer was needed. He brought his hand up in front of his face and made the water run down his palm, clearing away the blood and mixing it with the clear water.

He pointed out towards the sea and the water shot out from his hand, an arrow of liquid back where it belongs. Percy watched the waves rising and falling, eventually deciding he was sick of the constant in and out rush of the water, he changed the pattern into a heartbeat.  _Annabeth’s heartbeat_  he realised, closing his eyes.

“What did you do?” Jason asked, breaking the silence. “When you woke up and thought she was dead?”

Curling his fingers into a fist, Percy tried to force the tears back. Jason waited for him patiently “I- I panicked.” Percy admitted, struggling to find the right words “I grabbed her wrist, I turned it over and I- “

_Check her pulse, check her pulse, check her pulse, check her pulse…._

Percy gripped his ears, rushing water suddenly filling his head to the point of bursting. Shaking his head, he tried to dislodge the water but blood only made rivulets down his face like tears.

_Check her pulse, check her pulse, check her pulse, check her pulse…._

He tugged at his hair and when he pulled away, the raven black turned into the shadowed form of Nyx and her horses, looking down at him

_Check her pulse, check her pulse, check her pulse, check her pulse…._

“Percy.” Jason’s firm hand on his shoulder brought him back to the present and he snapped his eyes open wide to stare bug-eyed at the pulsing waves. “I checked her pulse.” He whispered and Percy could feel the make-believe tears of blood being replaced with actual tears that left tracks down his face. “I needed to know if she was alive, so I checked her pulse.”

Sighing, Jason shuffled closer to Percy and put his arms around his shoulders. “It’s going to be alright.” He mumbled as he gently pulled Percy closer, wrapping his arms around him like a chest plate. “It’s going to be alright.”

“No Jason.” Percy sobbed, holding tight to Jason’s t-shirt like it was his only anchor to reality. “It won’t be ok. I’m a monster.”

“No, no, no” Jason soothed, lightly stroking his fingers through Percy’s hair. Strands fell out around his fingers from where Percy had been pulling at it. “That’s not true.”

“Annabeth think’s I’m a monster.”

Taken aback, Jason’s hand stopped moving. “No, she doesn’t. Why would you ever think that?”

Percy went still. “You didn’t see her face in Tartarus.” He whispered, his voice sounding as broken as his heart.

Jason remembered the talks he had with Annabeth, the fear she felt when Percy had consumed Akhlys in a fountain of her own poison and corruption, the haunted look to his face, the sickening green his eyes would glow and the twisted grin on his face as he watched her writhe in pain.

Looking down at the sad and broken man weeping into his chest, Jason couldn’t ever imagine that they were the same person. But he knew. And he hated that he knew.

“It’s going to be alright, Perce.” Jason whispered “I promise that I’ll help you get through this. I swear on the River Styx.”

Jason held Percy until the sun started to rise, and when it raised high enough that the waved shone and the tide tickled his feet, Percy raised his arms and circled them both in a shield of water.

They were gone by the time Annabeth frantically burst through the doors of the Poseidon cabin, only for her to see Percy’s smiling form at his table, waving her over.

Nothing like the man he was last night. And as Jason watched them from his place at his father’s table, he realised that that was the most frightening thing about Percy Jackson.


End file.
